9:30 a.m. on Saturday, April 17th

Meeting locations for this Spring are:

The South Loop Field House
1801 S. Indiana

2nd Ward Yard
2801 S. Calumet

Crane High School
2245 W. Jackson

This is a great opportunity to show how much you care about your community. Come join your neighbors or meet new ones as we for one day play the role of Streets and Sanitation workers picking up trash, pulling out weeds, getting rid of graffiti and making our neighborhoods a cleaner and safer place to live and grow up in.

The City will supply all the cleaning tools and my office will provide lunch. There are many options available as far as cleaning locations and group stagings are concerned. For more information contact Maritza Garcia at my office, 312-263-9273.

These projects will bring many improvements to these areas. They will strengthen the aesthetic qualities, increase safety and make your drive, walk or bike ride much more smooth. The North-South portion of Upper Wacker will be transformed the same as the new East-West portion and the Congress Parkway Streetscape will turn that corridor into the most beautiful gateway to the City while improving pedestrian and motor safety.

While we are excited all these projects are taking place they will undoubtedly have a large impact on traffic flow during construction. Representatives from CDOT and IDOT are working closely with my office in order to respond to resident and business owner feedback. These representatives will be on hand for the length of the project to make adjustments to detour routes, traffic management personnel and and other aspects of the project as needed.

Once construction has begun if you would like to speak to someone about the project or traffic impact please contact my office at 312-263-9273 and we will work with CDOT and IDOT.

The full presentations of the four projects are available online here. Scroll down to the bottom and click on the specific project to download or view the entire street and ramp closures, construction plans and timelines.

Since being elected, the alderman has made improving and expanding our parks one of his top priorities. To accomplish this, he has budgeted City resources for our parks and has worked to secure both TIF and state dollars. In 2009, Ald. Fioretti dedicated two new parks — Printers’ Row and Battle of Fort Dearborn — and broke ground on another park to be completed next year at Adams and Sangamon.

We want to thank Friends of the Parks for this recognition. Ald. Fioretti will share this honor with everyone who has donated their time toward this common goal. A key leader in the alderman’s parks efforts is volunteer liaison Leslie Recht.

For more information on Friends of the Parks, including information on this event please view the web site: www.fotp.org.

I am working with the City of Chicago and Alderman Burnett to connect Nearwest side residents to job opportunities with a major healthcare employer.

Both skilled and unskilled positions are available. There is no cost to the jobseeker but you must act quickly as recruitment is currently underway.

To apply for these positions please visit Nearwestjobs.com.

For those of you who were unable to attend the meeting, I am happy to announce that Pete’s Fresh Market will be coming to the neighborhood. Construction is slated to begin in June 2010, and the store is set to open a year after in June 2011.

I personally visited many locations of all the chains that were in consideration, and Pete’s is the best choice for the community. It was with great pride that I made this announcement, fulfilling a promise I made during my campaign.

If you were unable to attend the meeting and would like a copy of Pete’s power point presentation, please e-mail Pasquale at my office at Pasquale.Neri@cityofchicago.org.